Racundra's First Cruise

by Arthur Ransome

  HELINGFORS COMPASS SWINGING POST TODAY.

  The principle of the thing is simple enough. The dolphin may be taken as a fixed point. On the land, at a considerable distance from it, are marks so placed that when the ship is in contact with the dolphin and heading directly on one of these marks, it is heading towards a known point of the compass. By observing at this moment the compass to be corrected, it is easy to discover exactly what its error is on that particular point.

  Just as we were making fast a small boat was rowed out to us carrying the red-faced Finn, who was a little disconcerted to find that the ship he was to swing was so very much smaller than the big vessels to which he was accustomed. However, he paid her a compliment or two when he heard where she had come from, and set very seriously about his business, after hurting our feelings a little by asking:

  “Will I put my foot through if I stand on the cabin roof?”

  “You will not,” I replied.

  “Ye can dance on her,” said the Ancient, and with that the work began.

  On the top of the cabin roof the Finn set up a heavy tripod carrying a sighting apparatus. At his command we pulled Racundra round that dolphin till he had one of the marks in line with his instrument. The dolphin was built for the swinging of big ships, and we had trouble in adjusting things so that we could use it for Racundra. The edge of the platform pressed against our shrouds and we had to take them down on one side. We decorated her side with all our fenders, and finding them insufficient, used our spare mattresses. However, in the end we got the thing to work. The Finn would call out the actual bearing, N., N. by W., or whatever it was, while I, darting to our steeling compass, called out the bearing indicated by the card and the lubberline. We had in no way exaggerated the inaccuracies. The Finn had brought with him two magnets brightly painted, which he screwed down in the steering-well in positions found by experiment. These magnets roughly compensated for the effects of the mass of iron in the motor, so that the compass became more or less correct. Then, point by point, with the help of a couple of sailors borrowed from another yacht, we pulled Racundra round and held her steady on each one of the thirty-two points, noting at each point the difference between actual and compass bearing. It took a long time, for the wind was strong, Racundra heavy, and the Finn conscientious. However, it was done at last, and down in the cabin, over a bottle of vodka, the expert worked out his results, drawing up a table on the Continental plan, while I translated them into a form readier for actual use, in one column writing the course, and in another the course to steer by our compass. By noon the work was done. I put the Finn ashore and hung up the completed table in the cabin.

  With that we were both for starting while the wind held, late in the day though it was. I took in water, made my farewells at the Nylands Club, and, without anchoring again, cast off directly from the dolphin and tacked out of the harbour.

  HELSINGFORS TO REVAL

  IT was 1.15 when we sailed, with the barometer at 30.1 and rising and the wind strong and easterly. The Nylands Club had been racing in the morning, and we met many of their boats coming in heavily reefed as we worked out through the buoyed channel which Boyce had shown me the day before. Three big grey ships of the British Fleet were at anchor in the outer harbour, but we were having our work cut out for us, twisting in and out among the buoys, and had small time to look at them. Outside there was a steepish sea, and we were getting a little splashed even before reaching Grohara Island, which we passed at 2.20.

  Grohara is a small rock with a stout white lighthouse upon it, to be left to westwards. The last time I had passed it in daylight was in winter-time, when an ice-breaker was ploughing a way through the ice for a convoy of six vessels, and then there was the wreck of a little steamer that had tried to pass Grohara on the wrong side, and, for her error, was held there hard and fast on the rocks and was covered, hull, masts, and rigging, with a coating of thick ice so that she looked a ship of glass. The ropes by which the crew had lowered their boat were still hanging from the davits, swinging stiffly in the wind like glass pendulums. It was difficult to believe that the jolly little island at which we were looking today had been, only seven months before, the centre of that desolate scene. Now, instead of being a hummock in a snow-covered icefield, it was set in blue sea, splashed with white, the colours of the Finnish flag, while far to north of it we could see the little islands and rose-coloured rocks, and farther yet, on the pale skyline, the domes and spires of Helsingfors, a picture only less beautiful in its way than the romantic entrance to Stockholm.

  From Grohara we steered S. and ½W., allowing rather more for drift than we should have done, and when we sighted the Aransgrund light-vessel, found it well away on the starboard bow. We steered to pass it close to, which we did at 4.7 (fifteen miles out from Helsingfors). By this time the swell was such that, though we were so near that on the top of a wave we could see the caps of the men on the light-vessel’s decks, in the trough we could not see the vessel at all, not even the tops of her masts. The wind had been blowing hard easterly for most of the time we had been in Helsingfors, which was enough to account for the size of the waves. We shipped a little water, and the Ancient, obstinate as usual, put on his oilskins too late, and remarked sadly, “I am already wet in mine starn.” I had put my oilskins on earlier, and had much amused him by carrying away on “mine starn” the blanket from my bunk as I rose from pulling the trousers down over the boots. Nothing will tame the prehensile tendencies of tarpaulins.

  The wind had shifted a little, but our course gave us a point or two to spare, and we gladly took up the centreboard. Then in a hardish gust a faulty fastening in the mizen peak halyards came adrift and the peak fell down. We lowered the sail and tied it, lashing the boom to the rigging to prevent its banging about, and found that sailing as we were, not absolutely close-hauled, she steered perfectly without the mizen. We sailed her so the whole way across the Gulf, the wind being so lusty that we willingly accepted from its own strength this shortening of sail that we should perhaps have been too proud (or too lazy) to reef in for ourselves.

  After this, which happened close by Aransgrund, Racundra settled down to her work and gave us a most exhilarating sail. It was a glorious day, bright hard sunshine, with cold in the air, as we get it in the Baltic at the back end of the year, a good wind heeling her over to the railing, stiff as she is, and that mighty swell lifting us sky-high and dropping us again into a blue depth walled by water. It was easy work steering, now that the mizen was gone, and we took it in long spells without the least fatigue. “This is better than coming across,” said the Ancient Mariner. “Wind’s all right, but it’s fog as I can’t stand. There’s nothing worse for sailormen than when that fog he spreads himself on the water and we go howling around all blind.”

  At 6.25 the Ancient saw land on the port bow which we knew must be Kokskar and Wrangel Island, and almost at the same moment I got a sight of the Revalstein lightship to starboard. By nine o’clock we were between Wulf Island and Nargon, and could consider that we had crossed the Gulf. But we were very far from getting into harbour. The wind had been falling away towards evening and shifting to the south, and it took us as long to make the ten miles remaining as it had taken us to cover the thirty-five that we had left astern. Yet at this moment, before the sky wholly darkened, we could actually see the spires and chimneys of Reval, and the huge crane to the west of the town, looking like a gigantic bird with outstretched wings.

  Then came complete darkness and a very cold night. We took turns at the wheel, the watch below occupying itself with the sidelights. I may say at once that the watch below envied the watch on deck, and, cold as it was, preferred the tiller to the sidelights. Fine copper sidelights they were too, pre-war, bought last year and horribly expensive. I had hesitated over their really shocking cost, but had remembered, “The smaller the ship, the more her need for good lights,” had gone without new shoes, refrained from buying a new hat, and plumped for the best and most expensive s
idelights I could buy.

  All winter they had lain in my room beside compass and lead-line, log, sea-anchor, sextant and cabin-lamp, and, shining there with the promise of the summer’s cruise, had warmed me with an inward glow, what time the snow was deep in the garden outside and the thermometer stood resolutely at zero or considerably below. On the smooth passages from Riga to Runö and from Runö to Paternoster they had burned well enough; and it had been a pleasure, steering through the quiet night, to know that the green eye and the red were gleaming brightly for any other ship to see. But during the gale that followed they had failed us. We had done our hopeless beating under jib and mizen, trying to make Baltic Port, with our lights out. We had wallowed about in the night between Pakerort and Nargon knowing that we showed no light to any other ship. Again, going into Helsingfors, as the wind got up off Aransgrund, they had failed us, and by now it was abundantly clear that they were but fair weather friends and would burn only in a comparative calm.

  PORT OF REVAL.

  PORT OF REVAL TODAY.

  To-night the watch below cleaned them, trimmed them, filled them, brought them on deck and set them in their places only to see them go out abruptly and decisively as soon as they were there. He took them below, trimmed them again, wrapped them in sackcloth for shame and as protection, and brought them out again, cuddled close as if they had been favourite lambs and he a careful shepherd, only to see them drop into darkness the moment they felt the wind above the cockpit coaming. He devised a new method of protecting them, thought of some other way of keeping them alight, took them below, retrimmed, relit and brought them up again, nursed like babies, to receive another blow from Fate upon the optimism that grew less sturdy as the night wore on. Then the man at the wheel, of course, thought that he could do better, so we changed jobs for half an hour until the other man’s optimism was hammered into the same shrinking, tender state as that of the first. Finally we both gave it up and kept them muffled in the galley, hoping to be able at least to show one dying flash of the right colour to any ship that we might meet. The riding light, a simple, cheap, ordinary affair, burned well, and we kept it among our feet in the cockpit, for warmth and to be able to flourish it in case of urgent need.

  We had to beat the whole way into Reval, and beating is not the thing that we are best at. We could, however, get along with short legs to eastward and then long legs in more or less the right direction. There was no difficulty about it. Reval is a good place to make in the dark. Just east of the harbour mouth are two lights, one standing well back and very high and another almost on the foreshore and low. These two, kept one above the other, lead the whole way in until one can see the lights of the harbour entrance. Moreover, one of them fades and goes out the moment the approaching or departing mariner has strayed to east or west of the safe channel. So we stood close-hauled as near southerly as we could until the light went out, then went about and sailed on the other tack while it shone out again, came under the high light, slipped clear of it and again faded and went out, whereupon we tacked once more. This we repeated continually, creeping slowly nearer all the time, growing colder and colder as the night wore on. Towards morning a little steamer passed us and anchored far ahead, close by the harbour. Soon after that we could see the electric lights on the quays, a light or two up in the sleeping town, and the riding lights of the men-of-war in the western corner of the bay. We had long lost the muffled moon, and began to rejoice in our slow speed, which promised to bring us, as indeed it did, among the crowd of anchored schooners and other small vessels in the roads just as the sky was lightening in the east.

  Dimly ahead of us we could see the pale hulls of ships, and already over to the east the dark sky seemed to blench. And then, as it were quite suddenly, there was more light, and we saw, as if at a signal, the sails of a schooner coming out of harbour, followed by another and another of the ships that had been waiting for the dawn. We passed the little steamer lying at anchor, tacked through the ships in the roads, crossing and recrossing the paths of the outgoing schooners, and came to the harbour mouth when in the blue mist of early morning the red and green lights on either side of the entrance glittered more like butterflies than lamps. They went out just as we turned in, took off our staysail and rounded up to one of the buoys off the Yacht Club mole. We tied the damp sails till we could dry them in the sun, and while the Ancient cleared up on deck, I went below and, with fingers so cold that I could hardly strike a match, lit the Primus and boiled water. With that we drank the last of our English rum, and now, suddenly, too tired to talk, dropped each on his bunk and slept.

  IN BALTIC PORT.

  BALTIC PORT TODAY.

  REVAL TO BALTIC PORT

  SEPTEMBER 5th, 6.20 a.m. Barometer 30.25. We wasted a day in getting provisions and taking on board the fine new gratings for the seats of the steering-well and the new iron horse for the mainsheet, which we stowed in the forecastle for use next year, as its mass of iron would have played all sorts of tricks with our newly adjusted compass. The wind that would have served us so well, had we been able to start before, had died away, and was replaced early this morning by a slight breath from the S.E., with which we drifted out of harbour on a clear morning while the smoke of the Reval chimneys was of divided opinions as to what wind was blowing or whether any wind was blowing at all. We, however, had made up our minds that the wind was S.E., and set the balloon jib as a spinnaker, and were happy to find that it agreed with us and drew. By nine o’clock we had brought Karlo Island due W. An hour later we had cleared it and were steering to pass close by Surop, the balloon now set as a staysail.

  Changes of sails were always a delight to the Ancient Mariner who, tenderly handling our little tablecloths and pocket-handkerchiefs, remembered sail-shifting in the famous ships of long ago.

  “My best sailing,” he would say, looking critically at our balloon, “was in the Demooply (Thermopylae). There was she and the Kutuzak (Cutty Sark), and I was in the Demooply. In those days there was racing between those ships, and not a man in any ship but would have his bet on one or other, if it was only a pound of tobacco. Double crews they had, and when I first sailed with the Demooply I thought officers and men were all mad. We never left those ships alone. We were shifting one sail or another sail for every little change of wind. Double crews, but none too many for the work, and before I had been on board a week, I was as mad as all the rest. There was real sailing done in those days.”

  To-day, however, no ingenuities in setting canvas would have been of any use to us. There ensued a period of absolute calm, accompanied by a psychological storm, for the Cook demanded that the motor should be used. The Ancient and I have never been shipmates with a motor before, and we do not like them, trust them or understand them. After long opposition, and trying to prove that we were really moving, although the water was like glass, we did at last try to wind it up, and found that it would not go; whereupon the Cook asked that it should be thrown overboard, and was not pacified on being told that it was valuable as ballast. However, when a breath of wind came diffidently down to us from the N. and we got steerage way again, she relented and gave us luncheon on deck. At 3.30 we had Surop Lighthouse abeam, and saw a flight of twenty-one duck just off the point. At four we passed the new Surop blinking-buoy, and saw the four-masted German schooner which had followed us out of Reval, away to N. of us by Nargon, with all staysails and spanker set, a fine sight, but too far away for the camera. By six o’clock we were just moving through the water N. of Fall, and it was already clear that the spell which lies on me when going westward along this strip of coast was not to be broken.

  Every time I have sailed from Reval to Lahepe Bay or to Baltic Port, I have been becalmed off Surop and spent the night drifting between there and Pakerort. I have spent as many as thirty hours on this passage of a score of sea-miles, and I face it always with desperate resignation. This was to be my record quick passage. Racundra easily beat both Slug and Kittiwake, for she, first of my ships, covered
those magic score of miles in under the twenty-four hours. The spell is not laid on that passage going the other way, but you will remember that it was precisely between Pakerort and Surop that we had to spend that wild night after our futile attempt to beat into Baltic Port with a broken wing.

  This night was to be the completest contrast to that night of storm. In scarcely rippled water, across broad patches smooth as oil, we crept slowly towards Pakerort. There was a fiery sunset over the sea to the N.W., against which the sails of the little fishing-boats on the bank off the promontory were as if picked out with a fine brush and Indian ink. We saw, through the binoculars, the little fleet scatter as the twilight fell. Some made off beyond the point, and three, under sails and oars, slipped homewards into Lahepe Bay on the nearer side of Pakerort. Black silhouettes against that fiery sky, they turned suddenly into pale blots moving against the darker mass of the cliff. And then the cliff itself faded, and the lighthouse above it shone out, and there were stars and a wind that you could feel on the back of your hand, but would not blow a match-flame crooked. The Cook, extremely angry with the motor, and with us for our philosophic, indeed almost relieved, acceptance of the fact that the smelly little creature would not work, went to bed. The Ancient and I smoked together in the steering-well, after lighting our sidelights, which on this calm bright night burned magnificently. We rounded Pakerort and then were met by a very slight breath from the S.E., against which we beat slowly into Roogowik.

  At anchor, off the harbour, was a ship of the Esthonian Navy. Signal lights were chattering between her and the harbour. Small boats with lanterns passed to and fro. The faint wind brought us the noise of music on board. And then, as we came nearer, someone on board must have noticed us, and we were presently drenched with the blinding cold glare of a searchlight. “They think we’re another little ship-of-war,” said the Ancient, “and they’re afraid we’re going to ram them.” If not, it was with very bad manners that they kept us in such a glare that we could hardly see what we were doing and could not see the tiny light of Baltic Port. At last, however, they tired of this, and when we had recovered our eyesight, we found the little red light of the harbour, stood on the port tack till it had turned to green, and then, keeping it so, tacked towards it and, at 1.30 a.m., rounded into the harbour.